单项选择题
Have other people’s delightful Facebook updates ever made you feel like a total loser Or have you ever felt that your best friend’s life is perfectly easy and joyful, while yours is nothing but struggle and anxiety You’re not alone.
In a series of experiments, a new study--which was inspired by the Facebook envy experience— identified several interacting psychological factors that underlie the grass-is-greener phenomenon.
First, 63 college freshmen were asked to report the positive and negative experiences they had had in the previous two weeks. Researchers found that 29% of students’ bad experiences occurred in private, compared with 15% of the good ones. And 40% of the time, people deliberately concealed negative feelings.
That helps explain why other people always seem like they’re having so much fun--they tend to be happier in social settings, and they usually don’t dwell on feelings of loneliness or depression when they’re out in a group. In contrast, many of our negative emotions are experienced alone, so we’re the only ones who see ourselves at our loneliest and most depressed.
The second study showed that students underestimated their peers’ negative feelings by 17%, while overestimating their positive emotions by 6%. It’s not surprising, given that when things aren’t going well, people try to keep their negative thoughts inside--no one wants to be a downer. That’s why people’s Facebook status updates are happy; very few people report on their latest failure. But although we all know that we hide our own negative feelings from others, we don’t realize how just how often our friends and families are doing exactly the same thing.
The third experiment explored whether these perception errors had emotional consequences. As expected, those who thought other people had the fewest negative experiences were lonelier than other students, dwelled on their problems more and felt less satisfied. Interestingly, however, the students’ misperceptions were not correlated with happiness or depression. But the methods used in the study can’t determine whether being lonely and dissatisfied causes people to underestimate others’ negative emotions--or vice versa.
Researchers also found that these problems intensified each other. It is suggested that your extra efforts at "image management"--whether in person or online--probably worsens feelings of isolation and distress in your friends, by adding to their impression that yours and others’ lives are happier and more successful than theirs.
Of course, it’s not that your friends want to see you doing badly either. It’s not about schadenfreude (幸灾乐祸)Rather, as the study authors explain, it may be the same phenomenon that makes tragic art so appealing.
Be aware that you can’t see what other people are really going through; the faces they present to the world may not accurately represent their true feelings. And remember that if you’re feeling alone, you’re in good company. Absurd as it may sound, the friends whom you envy may be envying you just as much!
A. Many of their negative feelings are hidden by themselves.
B. Almost all of their bad experiences take place in private places.
C. They easily come out of such bad feelings as loneliness and depression.
D. They pretend to be happier than people around them in public places.